This morning’s Washington Post had a great editorial about how important it is for Congress to make a complete overhaul of agricultural subsidies.
These subsidies have helped push rural land prices up and small family farmers out of the market. Other farm payments have been even more misdirected: A Post investigation found that the government gave $1.3 billion between 2000 and 2006 to landowners who did not farm at all. The billions spent on subsidies could be used for any number of other priorities, agricultural or otherwise — food stamps, conservation programs or debt reduction, for example.
This is the big week for the Farm Bill, and our last chance to reform its trade distorting subsidies until 2012. You can take action now by sending a fax to your member of Congress and let them know that you are in favor of the Fairness Amendment for comprehensive Farm Bill reform.
July 24, 2007 at 4:04 pm
i’m glad to see this here, this editorial in as prominent a paper as The Washington Post that surely goes right into the hands of many of the people who will voting on this issue. and this paper is distributed nationally. an amazing article from a prominent editor like this is gold. i hope there’s many more papers out there that pick this up, not just in the heartland of america where they in most cases are preaching to the choir but in the likes of my region where we need to do more work on this.
thanx, stay close,
sammi =)